Google's win is a win for consumers, too, despite its critics' complaints.

Of course, from a business perspective, Google never looked endangered in the first place. The company has close to 70 percent of the US search market, and pushes 90 percent in some parts of Europe; in mobile search, it utterly dominates, with around 98 percent. Google's market share in the US would surely be even higher but for all of the computers pre-installed with Microsoft software.

When a company gets that big, its biggest threat starts to come not from its competitors—who, at least in the Web search business, are few—but from governments, or big public-relations slip-ups. "We’ve always accepted that with success comes regulatory scrutiny" was Google's very diplomatic way of describing that predicament yesterday.

Now the FTC's antitrust investigation is over, with no charges brought, and some quite minor changes to Google's business practices. On the patent front, Google will make a sacrifice that's more substantial—but still doesn't outweigh the enormous benefits of being "in the clear" as far as the feds are concerned.

Is it a good thing that regulators won't be messing with Google? On balance, yes. Corporations that amass too much power are worth worrying about, and need to be watched—by governments, by non-profits, by journalists and by citizens at large. But at the end of the day, the insistence that Google wasn't playing fair wasn't coming from an enraged citizenry. It was coming from Google's rivals.

Google didn't make the Internet, and it doesn't own the Internet. But it has become a dominant force in navigating the net. Today, those tools of net-navigation touch everyone, like it or not. It's hard to imagine what the net would look like without them. Much of the war against Google that's getting pushed in courts and in Congress—by newspapers, by the entertainment industry, by traditional software makers—is, in reality, a proxy war. The real battle is an impossible fight against the disruption and change wrought by the Internet itself. That's not a fight worth cheering for, even for those deeply concerned with Google's power.

The antitrust attack that rivals pined for

Microsoft and other rivals had hopes for an assault from government regulators against Google—ideally, the same kind of massive antitrust litigation Microsoft had to endure back in the 1990s. Now, it's quite clear that such action isn't forthcoming in the US, and it's less likely to happen in Europe now, either.

As the regulatory probes against Google dragged on, it has become clear that in the antitrust area, they were sponsored by the company's chief corporate rivals—Microsoft especially. Almost no consumer or public interest groups expressed concerns about "search bias." The competitors' criticisms reached a new volume when Google completed its acquisition of ITA a few years ago, and a coalition called FairSearch was formed, which ultimately included Oracle and Microsoft.

When FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced the end of his investigation yesterday, he seemed to be speaking to some of Google's competitors/critics directly. And he sounded ready to head them off at the pass.

"Some may believe that we should have done more," said Leibowitz yesterday. That may come out of a "mistaken belief that criticizing us will influence other jurisdictions," he added.

In other words, he knew the criticism of Google would keep coming, in hopes to get the EU to take a tougher line against the company. And that's exactly what happened.

FairSearch quickly called the FTC's decision to not charge Google "premature," and today put up a second blog post saying that it's the EU and state attorneys general who will get the final word.

Microsoft took a similar position."[T]here appears to be no reason, despite the FTC’s optimistic statements this morning, to believe that Google recognizes its responsibilities as an industry leader," wrote Deputy GC Dave Heiner in a blog post.

The only silver lining in the end of the antitrust investigation against Google, in his view? That the other investigations still aren't over. "In Europe Vice President Almunia has made clear that he will close his investigation of Google only with a formal, binding order that addresses search bias and other issues," wrote Heiner.

A patent "loss" that isn't too bad

On the patent front, Google did suffer a meaningful setback. The company has agreed it won't use its big stash of standards-essential patents to get injunctions or "exclusion orders" in most cases. A hefty chunk of the $12.5 billion purchase price of Motorola was understood to be for its 17,000 patents, which it could use to counter-sue against attacks that Microsoft and Apple brought against the company, or its Android partners.

So was that purchase a bad deal now? Hardly.

First of all, no one should think the Moto purchase was all about patents. Google got much more than that: Motorola Mobility had manufacturing facilities, research facilities, more than 20,000 employees.

But it also got a giant stash of useful patents, the best of which are "standards essential" patents that have become controversial. Google did need those patents; and they're now somewhat encumbered because they can't be used to ask for injunctions. Microsoft and Apple, meanwhile, are flush with "feature" patents that aren't related to the international standards, so they're still in a position to try to kick products off the market.

That's not as big a setback as it may seem, though. First of all, Google and its partners can still use those patents to fight back in court. They can ask for significant damages based on such patents. Injunctions aren't going to be the end-all of the patents wars; Apple didn't get one in its court battle against Samsung, but it's still fighting and Samsung has the potential to suffer significant setbacks from that litigation. And the Moto patent portfolio is a big moneymaker in its own right, which has already been licensed to parties that aren't interested in fighting all the time.

The clearest sign that Google didn't get hit hard here? It's that arch-rival Microsoft is so unhappy about it. "The FTC’s proposed consent decree on patents runs for 13 pages, most of which spell out exceptions," the company notes in its responsive blog post. And Google can still threaten an injunction if it believes the patents being used against it are standards-essential themselves, even if its opponents disagree. That's often a murky line.

An unfortunate focus

Google's competitors have been lobbying for regulatory intervention for years now. In hindsight that focus is unfortunate, and probably misguided, as former FTC policy director David Balto noted in a recent article in The Hill. (Balto has done work for Google in the past.) Google's critics have switched up some of their theories and have tried turning to the DOJ, the other main antitrust regulatory agency; but at the end of the day, it really was an exhaustive investigation that, in terms of the evidence, never got past the first step.

"This came down to a simple proposition—are consumers harmed?" said Balto in an interview with Ars. "They never got past that first initial question." Even if consumer harm had been found, Google may have had defenses. It could have pushed evidence supporting its line that its industry is competitive, with the competition just "a click away," as the company has said before. Or it could have argued that search results are a kind of editorial product, protected under the First Amendment just like the front page article selection on the New York Times (which obeys its own mysterious, if more human, algorithms.) But it never got that far.

The government's investigation of search was exhaustive. It went on for 19 months, and involved millions of documents and countless discussions and interviews with Google executives. The FTC also spoke to Google's rivals, as well as small businesses that were concerned they were getting a raw deal from a leading search that favored its own services. (Some of those businesses continue to be highlighted by FairSearch.)

Maybe the government will have to take a close look at Google's algorithm again one day. But for now, the right regulators have taken a very close look—it has been one of the most comprehensive investigations in the history of the FTC—and the company has come up clean. Critics' continuing hope that Google will get snared in a brawl with the government is misguided.

"They'd rather try to win by hobbling Google through regulatory action rather than through inventing better products," said Balto. "Now Google will be able to innovate as much as they want, and price as aggressively as they want, without leading to an over-aggressive regulator." And that will be good for consumers.

^ This. It's hard to get upset about something that's free, even if they do harvest all of your private data to sell some ads. As long as that information doesn't end up with criminals, I think most people would be fine with that.

I'm sure everyone has their "likes" and "dislikes" where it concerns these companies. The fanboyism around here is so blatant. Look, if Google has done wrong, I'm sure every other company has also done wrong. If they were the 10th most popular search engine and Microsoft was the leading search engine, the complaints would be directed at MS.

The problem is that Google's practice here is incredibly anti-competitive. Google can promote their own services over others and knock everyone else down beneath the fold. Once Google starves the competition enough then it won't matter that alternatives are better or just one click away -- because those alternatives will be out of business. And an absence of competitors is in fact long term quite damaging to customers.

What "anti-competitive" action are you specifically referencing?

Edit: Their use of FRAND patents or something else? I'm not sure how your first sentence relates to the following ones if this is the case. If it is over search then do you mean on the desktop front or on the mobile front? Considering Google isn't the default search engine on most computers out of the box, I don't see why one should be surprised to see Google services or products when visiting www.google.com.

As for the issue of "standards-essential" patents, if there has to be a patent minefield for companies, at least let them operate on the same basis. Basically, companies that have cooperated in setting standards have been penalised for their cooperation. How is that good for the consumer?

I think the agreement about FRAND patents is basically toothless. The courts were not looking favorably on the use of FRAND patents for injunctions. Google agreed to give up a use that probably was not going to work anyway. Meanwhile, FRAND licensing terms are still not defined so we will still see long, drawn-out court battles about whether they should be 0.1% or 1% or 10%. The actual improvement here is minimal.

As for the other question, the FTC may be correct that Google is not using its search near-monopoly to get an unfair advantage for its other products. Perhaps. I think it is a good thing that the investigation happened, and they need to keep Google on their toes about this. If Google felt they could gain an unfair advantage here without consequence, I'm sure they would, and that would not be good for Google's consumers -- whether you consider "consumer" to mean actual users or Google's real customers, the advertisers.

It appears they celebrated by explicitly blocking the previously functional maps.google.com from Windows Phone devices.

I use most of Google's services - I'll be reconsidering some of these.

Try out maps.google.com in mobile opera; it's completely broken. They shouldn't redirect for windows phone, they should just let it be broken if it's broken, but that's often the kind of thing that happens when you use a browser with almost no marketshare.

I don't sniff and block browsers on my sites, but I don't ever test on a windows phone either, and it's very possible that things like touch events are completely broken. Honestly, I don't lose sleep over it. There is a never ending long tail of browsers to test on and only so much time in the day.

Hopefully the attention will get them to fix it, but honestly, the sin here seems about as bad as getting redirected to m.yelp.com with no option to get the full site: annoying as hell, but not that big of a deal in the scheme of things. I just use a different site.

Microsoft should just realize that they need to innovate to keep up with the times and not start these proxy wars. Google is great for consumers, Microsoft is horrible for consumers - and the market has spoken over the last few years. Frankly, Google's offerings are great, and as I consumer I love them.

As for the other question, the FTC may be correct that Google is not using its search near-monopoly to get an unfair advantage for its other products. Perhaps. I think it is a good thing that the investigation happened, and they need to keep Google on their toes about this. If Google felt they could gain an unfair advantage here without consequence, I'm sure they would, and that would not be good for Google's consumers -- whether you consider "consumer" to mean actual users or Google's real customers, the advertisers.

I agree with this assessment. I'm both unsurprised that Google came up clean, and glad that they were investigated as well. FairSearch's intentions are dubious at best, but the result - getting Google under the microscope - is a good thing. All large companies should have this done to them at some point, because there's no other way to keep them honest.

The problem is that Google's practice here is incredibly anti-competitive. Google can promote their own services over others and knock everyone else down beneath the fold. Once Google starves the competition enough then it won't matter that alternatives are better or just one click away -- because those alternatives will be out of business. And an absence of competitors is in fact long term quite damaging to customers.

As I said elsewhere:

Used bing to look up a map, found results for bing maps, mapquest, travel.yahoo.com, tripadvisor, etc.

No google results.

Did the same on google. Only difference was no bing maps link came up, but a small pic of the map was there (no map at top of bing result page).

I don't see Google whining about that.

Did a search for email, and both put yahoo at the top, gmail second. Third? Google put up a wikipedia link, bing put up hotmail while that came up fourth for google.

It appears they celebrated by explicitly blocking the previously functional maps.google.com from Windows Phone devices.

I use most of Google's services - I'll be reconsidering some of these.

I saw this too.

Others have tested this by spoofing their User Agent string. Tricking the site to think you're on Android or iPhone (or anything else, really), lets the site load just fine.

Yet Google claimed they aren't doing anything.

And everyone is eating that up.

Wasn't it common knowledge that Google long ago abandoned its "Do no evil" pledge?

I'm a fan of their Chrome browser, really. But I kind of saw it coming. No matter the noble ideals of a company as it starts out, when it grows large and becomes the dominant player, it's way too easy for them to get too set in their position and start exerting some muscle. I remember dreading the day that'd happen, years ago.

I think the agreement about FRAND patents is basically toothless. The courts were not looking favorably on the use of FRAND patents for injunctions. Google agreed to give up a use that probably was not going to work anyway. Meanwhile, FRAND licensing terms are still not defined so we will still see long, drawn-out court battles about whether they should be 0.1% or 1% or 10%. The actual improvement here is minimal.

The FTC can't really mandate things like FRAND rates because there is no legal definition of FRAND in the US. For instance, the FRAND rules for the Motorola patents that have been used for the attempted injunctions are defined in contracts that Motorola agreed to when joining working groups within ETSI and IEEE. These are governed by contract law and the FTC cannot start fundamentally redefining things there.

The FTC *can* step in when companies are twisting real or implied license grants agreed to within these standards bodies, but, unfortunately, the ETSI and IEEE rules agreed to gave a rather vague definition of "fair and nondiscriminatory licensing", and the FTC can't (easily) do anything about that. It would also work only in that particular context, rather than the broader standards-essential-patent terms google agreed to...other standards bodies and often even different working groups within a single standards body will have totally different patent licensing rules that they still refer to as (F)RAND.

I do agree that it was kind of a silly win for the FTC, as we could have just waited for judges to say "no" to the injunction requests and set up some precedent against easily getting injunctions with standards essential patents. On the other hand, those precedents may not apply at the ITC, where everyone likes to do their injunction work these days, and there was still a high probability of long cases wasting everyone's time before getting to that point, and several judges probably would have ruled narrowly without affecting standards-essential patent suits more broadly, so it's not all bad.

It really irks me that they are actively blocking Windows Phone from officially supporting YouTube. I don't know why, and I don't care why, the end consumer is being hurt and whatever they need to hash out needs to be done. It's absolutely asinine that it's not officially supported.

Arbitration for all FRAND patents. No value for future trolling. I'd say Google got its moneys worth from Motorola. Look at what this precedent says. In the future, Google won't need to fight the troll that MS stashed its FRAND patents with when Apple, Microsoft and the troll bought patents from a failing company.

Google only wants reciprocity (turn about is fair play) from the finger twitchers. By getting the FTC to say no to FRAND injunctions, it relieved Google from risks untold future litigation.

It really irks me that they are actively blocking Windows Phone from officially supporting YouTube. I don't know why, and I don't care why, the end consumer is being hurt and whatever they need to hash out needs to be done. It's absolutely asinine that it's not officially supported.

Why?

MS blocks google all the time. YouTube is owned by Google and MS has their own way wanting things to work. That happens not to mesh with how Google's property YouTube functions. Too bad.

MS is complaining about Apple as well. They want to sell their mobile version of Office products but not pay a fee to the App Store. At least not the same fee as everyone else. Seriously? Sure, they are after the only actual monopoly in this conversation.

Weird. Every time I type google.com into any browser on any Microsoft product I own it works just fine. I'd love to see some evidence that Google is explicitly blocked by Microsoft because I have yet to experience that. Youtube works just fine with other phone OS's, but for some reason Google actively blocks Microsoft from accessing the YouTube API.

It would be worthwhile to put something together that explains how all these acronyms tie together and which acronyms are tied to which company and their respective practices. Similar to the following:

SEP: Standards Essential Patent. If you have to support a standard then you may have use this type of patent. If you can work around it, great. If not then you need to license via FRAND.

FRAND: Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory relates to licensing, normally SEP type of patents. It is not specifically defined and thus the current set of lawsuits related to them. It is regulated via Contract Law.

Patent: A monopolistic right assigned by a government for a unique method/process (and any other damned thing that pays the fees). There is no inherent right to be able to use a patent under any terms. A patent grants a monopoly to the owner of the patent. If they decide to license it they can set the price as high as they want. They do not have to license it nor allow anyone to use it.

Monopoly: A company that has the largest percentage of a market but higher then 85% (please correct as my experiences were with 90+).

...

Something like that? Then link to it during these articles that stress your comment solution.

Weird. Every time I type google.com into any browser on any Microsoft product I own it works just fine. I'd love to see some evidence that Google is explicitly blocked by Microsoft because I have yet to experience that.

Sorry to the both of you. I meant to type Google products.

I have had that experience for the last ten years. Google search is the most used search engine inside MS, last I heard. So blocking that would be non-productive. How else is Bing going to measure themselves?

It really irks me that they are actively blocking Windows Phone from officially supporting YouTube. I don't know why, and I don't care why, the end consumer is being hurt and whatever they need to hash out needs to be done. It's absolutely asinine that it's not officially supported.

Actually MS is complaining that they don't have a "First Class" experience on WP. Google responded that all functionality, including stuff MS is complaining about, HD videos and such, are available via HTML5.

They can't really claim anti trust since they made an app for apple. And up until a few weeks ago, their own maps experience exceeded apple's, for years. And apple didn't whine about it either.

The maps blocking is rather stupid on Google's part. I just tested it and it is blocked (via agent spoofing). It only hurts Google since they aren't in the primary business of selling hardware (and even if you count Moto it won't help their bottom line).

Of course, it's hard for me to really feel any sympathy for MS since they did the same thing years ago to Opera users going to hotmail. And I could only use hotmail via outlook express on a computer, and not on a palm device (could do it on WM of course.)

It really irks me that they are actively blocking Windows Phone from officially supporting YouTube. I don't know why, and I don't care why, the end consumer is being hurt and whatever they need to hash out needs to be done. It's absolutely asinine that it's not officially supported.

Actually MS is complaining that they don't have a "First Class" experience on WP. Google responded that all functionality, including stuff MS is complaining about, HD videos and such, are available via HTML5.

They can't really claim anti trust since they made an app for apple. And up until a few weeks ago, their own maps experience exceeded apple's, for years. And apple didn't whine about it either.

The maps blocking is rather stupid on Google's part. I just tested it and it is blocked (via agent spoofing). It only hurts Google since they aren't in the primary business of selling hardware (and even if you count Moto it won't help their bottom line).

Of course, it's hard for me to really feel any sympathy for MS since they did the same thing years ago to Opera users going to hotmail. And I could only use hotmail via outlook express on a computer, and not on a palm device (could do it on WM of course.)

I want an app, not the shitty mobile site. Google won't let them access it that way, and there's no reason that the consumer gives a shit about that makes it okay. That's all I'm saying.

I want an app, not the shitty mobile site. Google won't let them access it that way, and there's no reason that the consumer gives a shit about that makes it okay. That's all I'm saying.

Probably what you are saying is you want it to look right at home with a metro theme.

Sucks, but I don't expect a first class experience of MS products on Android (and it isn't). Hotmail will not work natively on a Asus Transformer Infinity, even when using the EAS account setup verbatim per MS in Android (and it probably is Asus fault since stock Android has no EAS account support). I had to use their app, and it doesn't work as well as it should (syncs when it feels like it).

SnippingI want an app, not the shitty mobile site. Google won't let them access it that way, and there's no reason that the consumer gives a shit about that makes it okay. That's all I'm saying.

I am not disagreeing with you as a consumer.

I was just stating, poorly apparently, the current business situation. MS has always wanted everyone else to bow to their way of doing things. Their terms, their license, etc. but in this case Google does not want to nor has to.

Windows phone users are left in the cold.

Apple iOS 6+ users were as well until recently and there was much speculation that the YouTube and Google Maps apps wouldn't even get approval from Apple. Those concerns appear to have been false, last I checked. I haven't upgraded to iOS 6, partly for that reason.

Weird. Every time I type google.com into any browser on any Microsoft product I own it works just fine. I'd love to see some evidence that Google is explicitly blocked by Microsoft because I have yet to experience that. Youtube works just fine with other phone OS's, but for some reason Google actively blocks Microsoft from accessing the YouTube API.

Just to be clear. They routinely block google products in search results. They did before Bing. I haven't seen a review in a long while but earlier comments in this thread indicate they are still doing it.

It would be beyond silly, even for MS, to block the actual www.google.com site. I did not mean to imply they did.

^ This. It's hard to get upset about something that's free, even if they do harvest all of your private data to sell some ads. As long as that information doesn't end up with criminals, I think most people would be fine with that.

But surely a big part of the problem is that the information WILL inevitably end up in the hands of criminals (even Google can get hacked), repressive governments (Google "complies with local laws") and other nasties (Google could decide they don't really have a problem with "being evil" after all, or be bought by parties who aren't bothered by that kind of thing). "Information wants to be free", as they say. Once it is in the wild there is no stopping it or preventing it from being used for any given nefarious purpose.

You don't have a problem with Google having every detail of your life on file? Well, the Jews of Amsterdam didn't have a problem with filling out the census form provided by their tolerant, progressive government. Then the Nazis invaded, and discovered that they had on hand a nice resource telling them were every Jewish person lived. Needless to say there aren't many Jews in Amsterdam anymore.

What I found interesting about this whole news was the multiple shell companies and millions MS spent on lobbying for anti-trust charges against Google. To me that seems alot more shady than what Google was accused of.

The other stuff is kind of a separate issue but as someone who used firefox when IE was the dominate browser and many sites would only work in IE, so I don't have any sympathy for IE users who are now on the receiving end.

Maps, YouTube and etc are all things that Google developed and invested in and are no different than all the programs that MS has and doesn't allow on every other platforms to run like Office, directx, and etc. The lack of support of Google services on WP isn't something that just happened today, it was always kind of cruddy and reliant on 3rd party apps which I don't think have stopped working.

If MS wants to complain about openness then they should start by allowing alternative browsers in WinRT and WP8 that aren't just skins running IE.

I want an app, not the shitty mobile site. Google won't let them access it that way, and there's no reason that the consumer gives a shit about that makes it okay. That's all I'm saying.

Probably what you are saying is you want it to look right at home with a metro theme.

Sucks, but I don't expect a first class experience of MS products on Android (and it isn't). Hotmail will not work natively on a Asus Transformer Infinity, even when using the EAS account setup verbatim per MS in Android (and it probably is Asus fault since stock Android has no EAS account support). I had to use their app, and it doesn't work as well as it should (syncs when it feels like it).

Microsoft does provide first class experience on Android and iOS via its SkyDrive, Bing, One Note apps (and Skype if you want to throw that in)

I'm unclear who the author regards as Google's consumers. Surely, it's the advertisers.

Google has done more to bring in the future and respect the customer than most companies. Self driving cars. Augmented Reality phones. Not to mention all of the good will gestures such as free domestic and very very cheap international calls through google voice. Even with motorola they gave people money towards new phone purchases for phones that were released before they even owned the company. Could you imagine Dell giving you money toward a new Alienware purchase if you owned an alienware computer before dell had purchased them?

As for the issue of "standards-essential" patents, if there has to be a patent minefield for companies, at least let them operate on the same basis. Basically, companies that have cooperated in setting standards have been penalised for their cooperation. How is that good for the consumer?

Google can integrate into Windows 8 just as much as Bing. You can add Google to the OS' built in search charm via the Google Search app. In addition, you can change the default search provider in IE (both desktop and Metro) to Google. So, if I go to my Start screen and type ars technica, then click the Internet Explorer search option, the results will come from Google.